HSJ Awards 2018: Optimisation of Medicines Management

AT Medics – Central pharmacy team

Guidance on medicines optimisation is not in short supply. But at AT Medics – a provider of GP services to over 240,000 patients – a business intelligence tool demonstrated there was a significant gap between best practice and practical application.

To address this, a central pharmacy team was created. The mission of its members: to enhance and optimise medicines management and improve the quality of prescribing and prescribing safety.

Through further analysis of business intelligence data, the team identified patients whose medicines had been managed sub-optimally. These individuals’ records were reviewed by pharmacists, who either contacted the patient to offer advice over the phone – with follow ups at result intervals – or invited him or her to a face to face appointment. This consultation is, again, typically with a pharmacist.

Since the introduction of the approach, there have been significant improvements. Among them: a 53 per cent reduction in the number of people with asthma who are taking beta blockers; a 43 per cent reduction in patients with a long-term repeat prescription for non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs); a 26 per cent improvement in the monitoring of patients on disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARD); a 64 per cent improvement in the completion of lithium monitoring; and a 71 per cent improvement in the number of patients on warfarin who are receiving appropriate monitoring.

Read a detailed case study about this project at HSJ Solutions